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Though my taste buds still quiver at the thought of Rogue's last Voodoo Doughnut mash-up (Bacon Maple Smoked Shit Beer), that wouldn't stop me from trying their latest abomination in the making... especially when the three main ingredients are three things I love. How can you go wrong with bananas, chocolate, and peanut butter? Then again, that's what I said about bacon and maple, too.

It pours surprisingly dark; deep brown coming out of the bottle, taking on more of an obsidian shade as it sits in the glass. The head is absolutely huge; beige in color and towering to an astounding three inches. It was chunky and puffy, showed excellent staying power, and left behind some of the best lacing I've ever seen. I'm talking some FAT ass lacing, 360 degrees around. I'll give it that - it looks pretty great.

The aroma is stained with hefty amounts of overripe, nearly rotten bananas and banana skins laying on top of a slightly roasted malt blanket. Chocolate malts are lighter at first, but get stronger with warmth (and once you start trying to really look for them). The chocolate really isn't sweet or roasty or dark... it just smells like bland cocoa powder in the background and nothing more.

I'm wasn't really picking up any peanut butter in the aroma at all, at first. Maybe a faint, dry nuttiness in the very tail end, but I wouldn't say it smelled like peanut butter. Near the end of the glass, however, the peanut butter crept in a bit and took on a very slight "peanut butter cup with banana" aroma. Sounds good, right? Well, it wasn't awful. It wasn't even bad. It was just a little artificial and contrived. Maybe a little too messy when all is said and done.

The taste is a bit muddled and even a little bit of a let down from the aroma, though not nearly as much of a let down as the Bacon Maple ale. The problem is you've got banana, chocolate, and peanut butter bum rushing your palate all at one, in separate parts rather than entwined harmoniously. The mouth feel (and therefore, flavor) is also a bit watery, possible a consequence of the low alcohol tag?

Malty and lightly chocolate is the base upon which some banana extract flavor rest. Peanut butter is still the lightest component, as it kind of sits quietly in the back like the lonely, left-out adjunct. The beer has a weird, sharply bitter twinge about halfway through - I doubt it's from hoppage, so it might be from the roast of the malt. This astringency isn't very enjoyable, although this beer really wasn't that bad, and it was far from "hard to drink" like many people here would say.

I think so many people were let down by the Bacon Maple ale that they decided to write this one off before even trying it. If you go into a beer assuming it's going to taste like shit, then it'll probably taste like shit. This beer wasn't exactly "good" and it's not something I would go out and get again, but it was drinkable and it was different, and it was about six thousand times better than the Bacon Maple ale.

Like others have said this was a major disappointment. I was really looking forward to this one and couldn't get down a glass of this stuff. Looks amazing and had my hopes up immediately, the smell was different, but then the taste was... awful. The taste was very artificial and for $13 a bottle I was expecting so much more.

Full disclosure: I enter into this review 1) fully aware of the less-than-stellar reputation of this beer; and 2) as one of those freaks of nature who is not particularly fond of doughnuts, or indeed most pastries. I will endeavor to keep my opinions unbiased despite these faults, but anything noted in here must be taken with a grain of salt.

Voodoo Doughnut Chocolate, Banana & Peanut Butter Ale opens to a sweet, sugary nose that makes immediately obvious the beer’s three extracts: milk chocolate is perhaps the strongest of the three aromas, reminiscent here of chocolate stouts (Samuel Smith’s Organic Chocolate Stout comes to mind), hot chocolate, and iced mochas; peanut butter comes next, smelling like a more sugary version of peanut butter that might be found in a Reese’s; and bananas are last, adding a light banana aroma that blends well with the peanut butter and chocolate. The aromas as a whole are fairly light, and the aforementioned extracts make up at least three-quarters to four-fifths of the detectable aromas, the rest comprised of small hints of caramel and brown sugar, very light ash, biscuit, pie crust, and a few scattered berry and fig fruit esters, as well as a pinch of super sweet confectioner’s sugar. As a whole, the aromas are nice, obviously sporting a heavy addition of aromas from the bananas, peanut butter, and chocolate, but these blending nicely together in dessert-like fashion, mixing with the breads to form a chocolate, peanut butter, and banana pie aroma. The effect is admittedly strange, and does come across as very sweet, offering little to suggest that the beverage is in fact a beer, but surprisingly pleasant.

On the tongue, the beer opens with a shot of chocolate and bananas, tasting very much like sliced bananas dipped in a mixture of light and dark chocolate, and that covered in sprinkles of sugary peanut crumble. The effect is heavily dessert-like, tasting not so much like a doughnut as it does something that would be offered at a carnival. These dessert-like flavors sit atop a light bed of ash, biscuit, and cracker, lending a bit more of a pie crust flavor. What is particularly jarring here is not the doughnut or sweet flavors, but the hops, which bring in a bitter pine and grapefruit rind note that jars with the sweetness, like taking a bite of fresh grapefruit after brushing your teeth. The orange fruit esters don’t help with this sensation, muddling the waters with further citrusy notes. Over the course of several sips, much of the initial nuance of the early flavors is lost, and the bitter hop and citrus notes become stronger, clashing heavily with the sweet chocolate, peanut butter, and banana dessert notes, so that the aftertaste becomes a dry, astringent strangeness: grapefruit rind and fresh cut grass mixed with chocolate and brown sugar. Mouthfeel is medium-light, and carbonation is medium to medium-heavy, fizzing on the tongue.

Overall, the beer seems deeply divided, offering on the one hand a nice set of sweet dessert notes that, while offering few traditional beer flavors, are still tasty; and on the other hand, a bitter, citrusy, and grassy thread that wouldn’t be out of place in a light IPA. The problem is that these flavor sets would be decent by themselves, but don’t work together, and the beer feels like it needed to make up its mind whether it wanted to be a dessert beer, or a lightly-hopped pilsner.